Australia Muslim Cleric Hate
Australia cancels citizenship of Muslim cleric
in local first
Reuters
November 25, 2020
SYDNEY: Australia has canceled the citizenship
of an Algerian-born Muslim cleric who was convicted of leading a terrorist cell
that planned to bomb a football match in Melbourne in 2005, Minister for Home
Affairs Peter Dutton said on Wednesday.
Abdul Nacer Benbrika is now
the first person to be stripped of his citizenship while still in Australia.
“If it’s a person who’s posing a significant terrorist threat to our country,
then we’ll do whatever is possible within Australian law to protect
Australians,” Dutton told reporters in Brisbane.
Benbrika was convicted on three terrorism charges. He
was jailed for 15 years for directing a terrorist group, being a member of a
terrorist group and possessing material associated with planning of a terrorist
act.
Benbrika remains in an Australian prison despite
finishing his sentence. Under Australian law Canberra is permitted to detain
anyone convicted of terror offenses for up to three years after their sentence
finishes.
Lawyers for Benbrika have appealed against his
ongoing detention. He has 90 days to appeal the cancelation of his visa and
return to Algeria.
Under Australian law, a person can only be stripped of their citizenship if
they are dual citizens, thereby preventing people from being made stateless.
Australia used the powers in 2019 to strip the citizenship of Neil Prakash, an
alleged Daesh recruiter who is imprisoned in Turkey. Australia argued he was a
dual citizen as he also has Fijian citizenship, though Fiji denied the claim —
souring the bilateral relationship.
Outrage
at Muslim preacher's 'repugnant' views that it's a 'major SIN' for a wife to
refuse her husband's demands for sex
• Muslim fundamentalist preacher in Sydney said husband could
demand sex
• Nassim Abdi described a wife's refusal to get intimate with
spouse as 'major sin'
• Feminists Eva Cox and Catharine Lumby condemned Sunni
religious sermon
• New South Wales Attorney-General Mark Speakman said his
views 'repugnant'
By STEPHEN JOHNSON FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA
PUBLISHED:
23:00 EDT, 10 September 2018
Feminists and the NSW Attorney General have expressed concern after a Sydney
Muslim preacher declared it was a 'major sin' for a wife to refuse sex with her
husband.
Nassim Abdi, a fundamentalist Sunni, told an Auburn mosque in the city's west a
woman would be 'cursed' by angels for withholding marital intimacy.
'If the husband calls the wife to be intimate and there's no legitimate reason
for the woman to say no, then she must answer the call of her husband,' he said
on Friday night.
'She must answer the call of her husband and if not
she has committed a major sin.
'If the man calls the wife to bed and she refuses, the angels curse this woman
and he sleeps with her whilst he's angry, the angels curse her until she wakes
up.'
Mr Abdi preaches a seventh-century fundamentalist
version of Salafist Islam from Saudi Arabia with the Ahlus
Sunnah Wal Jamaah Association, which also advocates
aspects of Sharia law.
Long-time feminist Eva Cox described him as a 'nutter',
while stressing Islam was not the only religion with fundamentalists who
disrespected women's rights.
'Somebody needs to inform the preacher that he's preaching something which is
illegal,' she told Daily Mail Australia.
'Preaching something which is illegal maybe should be banned.
'I'm sorry we've got these nutters.'
Macquarie University research professor Catharine Lumby, a gender adviser with
the National Rugby League, described the sermon as 'hate speech'.
'That kind of speech should be investigated. I believe in freedom of speech but
I believe in limits to freedom of speech where violence is being advocated,'
she said.
'It is absolutely against the law in this country what he's advocating.
'It's a form of hate speech.'
Both feminists from an academic background stressed that fundamentalist
Christians, too, had described women as the sexual property of men and said the
sermon was not a reflection on all Australian Muslims.
Mr Abdi has previously declared it sinful for Muslim
women to show their ears under their hijabs in public and for parents to allow
their children to listen to music in the car.
Professor Lumby said Mr Abdi's sermon could encourage
Muslim men to commit domestic violence.
'I would say it's incitement to commit a criminal offence: if your wife doesn't
submit, then you still have the right to take her. That is a crime under
Australian law,' she said.
'Shocking. The more I think about what this fundamentalist preacher said, in a
way he's advocating a form of domestic violence.'
New South Wales amended the Crimes Act this year to give three-year jail terms
for inciting violence based on race, religion or sexuality.
However, it didn't specifically target the comments of religious preachers.
Attorney-General Mark Speakman said Mr Abdi's remarks
were a matter for police.
'Non-consensual sex is a serious crime which should be reported to the police,'
he told Daily Mail Australia today.
'Respect for all women is a central value of Australian society.
'The views expressed by this preacher are repugnant to those values.'
Daily Mail Australia has sought a right of reply from the Ahlus
Sunnah Wal Jamaah Association at Auburn.
The group removed the video from YouTube after a series of questions were
emailed to them.
It was titled: 'Prohibitions regarding intimacy in marriage.'
Marital rape didn't become a crime across Australia until 1994, with South
Australia in 1976 becoming the first state to criminalise
sexual assault in a marriage.
Muslim imam resigns as Australian Defence Force's
religious adviser after senator reveals the sheikh signed a petition supporting
Islamist extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir
• Muslim Sheikh Mohamadu Nawas Saleem quit his
taxpayer-funded Defence role
• It came after Senator Cory Bernardi
raised his support for Hizb ut-Tahrir
petition
• Former Iraq war veteran Bernard Gaynor said the government
was embarrassed
By Stephen Johnson For Daily Mail Australia
2
July 2017
A Muslim imam has resigned as a taxpayer-funded Australian Defence
Force religious adviser after a senator told parliament he had signed a
petition in favour of Islamist extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Sheikh Mohamadu Nawas
Saleem quit his $717-a-day post last month, only days after Australian
Conservatives Senator Cory Bernardi questioned how
the government could justify employing someone who opposed democracy.
Former Iraq war veteran Bernard Gaynor, who launched a petition calling for
Sheikh Saleem's removal as Defence imam, said the
government was embarrassed.
'The government's been very quiet about the resignation,' he told Daily Mail
Australia on Sunday.
'They've been running politically correct games with in the Defence
Force and they're embarrassed by the scrutiny.'
Defence Personnel Minister Dan Tehan
announced late last month Sheikh Saleem had resigned from the Religious
Advisory Committee to the Services, which advises the Australian Defence Force.
His spokesman declined to detail the circumstances of the resignation in the
wake of Liberal defector Senator Bernardi's speech to
parliament.
Mr Tehan's short-lived
predecessor Stuart Robert appointed Sheikh Saleem in June 2015 to his $717 a
day role as a religious adviser.
Four months earlier, in February 2015, Sheikh Saleem added his name to a
petition opposing then prime minister Tony Abbott's plan to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir in Australia.
The petition argued Hizb ut-Tahrir,
which supports Sharia law and has a constitution backing the death penalty for
ex-Muslims, had never committed terrorist acts in Australia.
But the group's Islamist ideology is so extreme it is banned in Germany, The
Netherlands, Russia and a range of Muslim-majority nations including Indonesia
Pakistan, Bangladesh and even Saudi Arabia.
Mr Tehan's media statement,
published on June 23, did not condemn Sheikh Saleem's association with a
petition defending Hizb ut-Tahrir.
'The government has always accepted the right of any member of the RACS to
express their views according to their religious faith, but, as a matter of
course, does not always agree with them,' he said.
'The government acknowledges Sheik Saleem's contribution to the RACS on behalf
of his community.'
Mr Gaynor, who served as an Iraq war intelligence
analyst in 2008 and 2009, said a Muslim imam who signed a petition in favour of Hizb ut-Tahrir was bound to support Sharia law.
'An imam by virtue of his appointment and position will promote Sharia law,' he
said.
The war veteran ran as an Australian Liberty Alliance candidate last year and
last month launched a petition calling for Sheikh Saleem's removal.
It amassed 13,000 signatures.
In May, federal Attorney-General George Brandis
rejected a call to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir, despite its recent calls for ex-Muslims to be
killed and its advocacy of domestic violence.
Daily Mail Australia has been unable to contact the sheikh who is on the board
of Imams Victoria.
'In their eyes the attackers are martyrs': Islamic sheikh claims Saudi
Arabian team refused minute's silence for London terror victims because under
Sharia law 'it's not a sin for a Muslim to kill a non-believer'
• Muslim imam claims it is not in Saudi Arabia culture to
refuse a minute's silence
• He says the football team may believe it is 'not wrong or a
sin' to kill a non-Muslim
• It comes after the Saudi Arabia football team did not take
part in the mourning
• The team refused to stand still as stadium quietly paid
tribute to terror victims
By April Glover and Hannah Moore For Daily Mail Australia
8
June 2017
An Islamic imam has suggested the Saudi Arabian team refused to take part in a
minute's silence for the London terror victims because they believe 'it is not
a sin for a Muslim to kill a non-believer'.
Sheikh Mohammad Tawhidi says it is a 'lie' to say the
Muslim culture does not remember the dead with a moment of silence, and instead
argues the football team did not partake in the mourning
because they stand with the jihadist men.
'They did not stop for a moment of silence because according to Wahhabi Islam -
which governs Saudi Arabia - it is not wrong or a sin for a Muslim to kill a
non-Muslim,' he told Daily Mail Australia.
'Their response suggests that within Muslim culture they don't remember the
dead with a moment of silence. This is a lie.'
Sheikh Tawhidi says under Islam Sharia law it is not
'wrong' or a 'sin' for a Muslim to kill a non-Muslim.
'In their eyes the attackers are martyrs who are going to paradise. And if they
stand for a minute of silence they are against their
Muslim brothers who fought for jihad and fought the “infidels”,' he said.
Sheikh Tawidi also added the team would have been
'ridiculed' back home if they had commemorated the victims of the London
terrorist attack.
But this may not be the view of every player within the Saudi team, he pointed
out.
The Saudi Arabian soccer team defended its refusal to stand in silence to mourn
the Australian victims of the recent terror attack at the World Cup qualifier
because it is not in keeping with their culture.
A spokesman for Football Federation Australia explained they were told a minute
of silence was 'not in keeping with Saudi culture' ahead of the match.
Fans were left outraged at the display ahead of the World Cup qualifier against
Australia in Adelaide.
Pictures show the Australian team lined up at the halfway mark, with the Saudi
players ignoring the gesture as they moved into formation to start the game.
Saudi
players on the bench also refused to stand for the minute's silence.
A spokesperson from the Football Federation Australia told Daily Mail Australia
they had been advised prior to the match that the Saudi team would not be
taking part.
'The FFA sought agreement from the Asian Football Confederation and the Saudi
national team to hold a minute’s silence in memory of those lost in Saturday
night’s terror attack in London and in particular the two Australian women,'
the spokesperson said.
'Both the AFC and the Saudi team agreed that the minute of silence could be
held.
'The FFA was further advised by Saudi team officials that this tradition was
not in keeping with Saudi culture and they would move to their side of the
field and respect our custom whilst taking their own positions on the field.
'The local broadcaster, FOXSPORTS, was informed of this prior to the minute’s
silence taking place.'
Australian football fans on social media were furious, and lashed out against
the team.
'Minutes silence for London terror, Saudi players wandering around like they
don't give a f***, Saudi fans shouting the whole time #AUSvKSA,' a man named
Adam tweeted.
Others called for official measures to be taken against the team.
'I hope FFA call out Saudi Arabia on the clear lack of respect shown prior to
KO. Not participating in the minutes silence is disgusting,' user PG3_12 wrote.
However, some Saudi fans claimed it was not within Islamic culture to take a
moment of silence to respect the dead.
'They come from a different culture. They just don't understand the point of
being silence for a minute to show sadness.. we never
do it in KSA,' one fan wrote.'
The majority of the Saudi side are Muslim, and to honour
the dead, it is understood they pray, give to charity and speak highly of the
person, but rarely observe silence.
Minutes of silence are a common occurrence in the Premier League, and Muslim
players are not known to boycott the mark of respect.
The game added extra tension to an already important match, but Australia came
out on top with a score of 3-2.
Saudi FA, FFA, FIFA and the AFC have been approached for comment.
Two Australians were killed in Saturday night's terror attack on London Bridge
and nearby Borough Market.
Nanny Sara Zelenak, 21, was confirmed dead on
Wednesday, after her mother flew to London to try and find her.
She had been separated from her friend on London Bridge just before the violent
attack began.
Nurse Kristy Boden was also killed in the attack. She had run to help victims
when she was also murdered by the terrorists.
Four Australians were caught up in the attack in total, Prime Minister Malcolm
Turnbull has said.
They included Candice Hedge who is recovering in hospital after undergoing
surgery after being stabbed in her neck.
Darwin electrician Andrew Morrison has travelled back
to Australia after receiving stitches after he was knifed in the neck.
E-learning business owner James McMullan, 32, from Hackney in east London, was
killed while he was out celebrating his first million pound deal.
Canadian Christine Archibald, 30, had died in her fiance's
arms after being struck by a speeding van. She was the first victim to be
named.
Frenchman Alexandre Pigeard, 27, from Colleville-Montgomery, in Normandy, was killed at the Boro Bistro restaurant where he worked.
Mr Pigeard was stabbed in
the neck in front of friends, according to his manager.
French citizen Xavier Thomas is believed to have gone missing after the attack.
He is understood to have been with his girlfriend Christine Delcros
when the attack took place. Ms Delcros
is said to be injured in hospital.
Ignacio Echeverria, 39, used his skateboard as a weapon against a
knife-wielding terrorist as he tried to save a woman from being attacked, it
has been revealed.
He lived in London, but hailed from Las Rozas near
Madrid.
Frenchman Sebastien Belanger has not been seen since the attack.
The three terrorists behind the attacks have been named as Rachid Redouane, Khuram Butt and Youssef
Zaghba.
All three were shot dead by police within eight minutes of the first emergency
call.
Islamic sheikh tells teenage girls they will go to hell for having
non-Muslim friends and will be punished if they pluck their eyebrows
• Hardline Sheik Mohamad Doar told
girls they needed to avoid non-Muslims
• He told the teenagers friendships with non-believers would
see them go to hell
• He also described eyebrow plucking as a 'major sin' which
Allah would curse
• The Saturday night forum was organised
by Muslim charity Sisters United
By Stephen Johnson For Daily Mail Australia
16
April 2017
A fundamentalist male sheikh told girls at a youth night that they would go to
hell if they befriended non-Muslims or plucked their eyebrows.
Sheikh Mohamad Doar told a room of teenage girls in
Sydney's west they needed to stop being friends with non-believers in a lecture
that also covered Islamic fashion and grooming.
'The reality is, my sisters, any friendship that is not built on the fear of
Allah is only going to lead to hell fire so you need to be cautious,' he said
on Saturday night.
'With your actions, you distance yourself from the corrupted people.'
Sheikh Doar, from the Ahlus
Sunnah Wal Jamaah Association, told the forum, held
at Punchbowl, that women would also be cursed by Allah if they plucked their
eyebrows, waxed their body or shaved.
'You are not allowed the remove the hair of the eyebrow, it's a major sin,' he
said.
'The lady who plucks her eyebrows and the one who gets them plucked, they're
both cursed by Allah.'
He was referring to the hadith, describing the actions of the Prophet Mohammad,
as part of a question and answer session organised by Muslim charity Sisters United.
Taking questions from the girls, Sheikh Doar told
them they needed to wear their hijabs loose and with no bright or colourful patterns.
'It cannot be see-through showing skin. The hijab needs to be as plain as
possible,' he said.
'It cannot be an imitation of the disbeliever's dress code. It cannot be
attracting to the eye. It cannot resemble the dress of men. It can't be a
showing-off cloth.'
He also warned them they would face criticism about their dress sense from
other Muslims and kafirs, an Islamic term for
non-believers.
The sheikh's advice is generally rejected by secular Muslims, who also shun
sharia law.
The Sunni ASWJ's fundamentalist founder, Sheikh Feiz
Muhammad, last year said it was a major sin for Muslims to attend non-Muslim
events like New Year's Eve celebrations.
'Is it part of the sharia? Are we allowed to entertain ourselves with
celebrations that are built on non-Muslim concepts?,'
he said.
'If you go on the belief, ''I just want to join in and have the fun, you know,
just have a night out, and enjoy myself but I don't believe in all this
nonsense'', that's a major sin.'
Another ASWJ Islamic teacher, Abdulghani Albaf, told
a male-only mosque at Auburn in March that Muslim men would be judged harshly
by Allah if they used urinals.
'There are two mentionings, one that mentions when
they would urinate that they would do so without, in public, without
concealing, hiding themselves or hiding their private parts,' he thundered at
the end of his 48-minute, Friday night sermon.
'How often do we see this today? Every public, every male public toilet now has
urinals where they just stand up like animals and urinate in front of one
another.
'What's worse is we even have Muslims using these urinals.'
Days
after the carnage in London, this is the moment we catch a firebrand Islamist
leader on camera saying all former Muslims should be put to DEATH... in Sydney
on Saturday night
• Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesman Uthman Badar confirms support for killing ex-Muslims
• 'Apostates attract capital punishment and we don't shy away
from that'
• Badar made the remarks at a
public talk in Sydney's west on Saturday night
• The group is so extreme it is banned in Muslim-majority
nations like Bangladesh
• Men and women were segregated at the sharia law forum in
Bankstown
• The matter has now been referred to the Australian Federal
Police
By Stephen Johnson For Daily Mail Australia
PUBLISHED:
27 March 2017
A leader of a hardline Islamist group which campaigns for sharia law says
Muslims who leave the religion should be put to death.
Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesman
Uthman Badar was frank when asked about the group's
policy at a forum in Bankstown, in Sydney's south-west, on Saturday night.
'The ruling for apostates as such in Islam is clear, that apostates attract
capital punishment and we don't shy away from that,' Badar
said in the presence of children. An apostate is someone who decides to leave
Islam.
His extraordinary admission was exclusively captured on camera by Daily Mail
Australia and the matter has now been referred to the Australian Federal Police
by Justice Minister Michael Keenan.
Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia
removed references to that apostasy policy from its website as Alison Bevege, a freelance journalist, sued the group for making
her to sit in a women's-only section at a separate talk in October 2014.
On Saturday night, Ms Bevege
held up a printed copy of Hizb ut-Tahrir's
draft constitution of the khilafah state published on
the UK site, which was on the group's Australian website until 2015.
This outlines their vision for a global Islamic caliphate, which has Muslims
and non-Muslims living under sharia law.
She asked about their policy of killing people born as Muslims who leave the
faith.
Article 7c of the document said: 'Those who are guilty of apostasy (murtadd) from Islam are to be executed according to the
rule of apostasy, provided they have by themselves renounced Islam.'
Badar initially responded by saying the policy wasn't
on its website before explaining how the group's apostasy policy was compatible
with Islam.
'The whole thing covers different aspects of Islamic sharia law,' he said.
'The role of apostasy in Islam is very clear. Again, this is one of the things
the West doesn’t like and seeks to change the role of apostasy.'
A spokeswoman for Justice Minister Michael Keenan condemned language that
incites or advocates violence.
'Language that incites or advocates violence is not freedom of speech,' the
spokeswoman said.
'This matter has been referred to the AFP.'
Badar's remarks came after he delivered the keynote
lecture for the forum, which was called 'Sharia and the modern age'.
He said Islam was incompatible with a secular separation of religion and state,
democracy, individual rights and even the process of science, which he called
'scientism'.
He compared calls to fit Islam within a secular society to domesticating a wild
animal, putting Hizb ut-Tahrir
at odds with secular Muslims who reject sharia law.
'The West seeks to domesticate Islam, to control, to bring within, the way you
domesticate animals,' he said.
Badar described calls to reform Islam from secular
Muslims as 'pernicious', 'insidious' and 'dangerous' and called for radical
change.
'Always when you hear these sorts of calls, alarm bells should ring,' he said.
'The Islam people are calling for fits very well within modernity. They’re
giving in to the pressure to conform.'
About 100 people were at the publicly-advertised lecture with men making up
about two-thirds of the audience.
Women were segregated from the men on the left-hand side of the room, apart
from Ms Bevege who stood at
the back.
Following the lecture, a group of men followed Daily Mail Australia to a parked
car.
One older man bizarrely demanded to know if men and women had equality in
Australia.
An ex-Muslim from Bangladesh, Shakil Ahmed, attended the talk and later
described his disgust with Hizb ut-Tahrir
and Islamists, which orchestrated marches in his home country in 2013.
Islamists staged marches in the capital Dhaka after the murder of gay rights
activists and atheist bloggers.
'Their primary demand was the death of apostates and blasphemers,' Mr Ahmed, 20, told Daily
Mail Australia.
He said it was depressing to hear Hizb ut-Tahrir voice their support for the killing of ex-Muslims
in Australia.
'What I felt instinctively is that the reason I left my country was so that I
could escape from the exact same people that I found in that room,' he said.
As an ex-Muslim atheist in Bangladesh, he was discreet about his beliefs.
'Apart from a close circle of family and friends, we don't integrate with
others as we don't know how they would react to our views,' he said.
Another Bangladeshi student Shubhajit Bhowmik also
attended the lecture.
The Hindu blogger was on the same death list as atheist blogger Avajit Roy when he got hacked to death in 2015 in Dhaka for
promoting secularism.
Farabi Shafiur Rahman, an
extremist blogger and member of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Bangladesh was arrested in connection with
Roy's murder.
'Once you escape from death, then you will hardly find things that will scare
you,' Mr Bhowmik told Daily Mail Australia about
seeing Hizb ut-Tahrir
Australia leaders in the flesh.
Another Islamist group of religious madrassah teachers,
Hefazat e Islam, circulated hit lists of Bangladesh
and emerged after Hizb ut-Tahrir
was banned in 2009.
Like Hizb ut-Tahrir, they
have campaigned in Bangladesh to dismantle parliamentary democracy, scrap
aspects of the constitution that contradict sharia law and wind back women's
rights.
The latest revelation about Hizb ut-Tahrir
in Australia comes as Islamists in Pakistan take to social media to demand the
killing of atheist blogger Ayaz Nizami.
He and two others were charged with blasphemy this week by a court in Islamabad
and face the death penalty.
Hizb ut-Tahrir operates in
40 nations, including Australia and the United Kingdom, but is banned in
Bangladesh along with other Muslim and Muslim-majority nations including
Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan.
Muslim cleric calls for beheading of Dutch politician
(Reuters) - A well-known Australian Muslim
cleric has called for the beheading of Dutch anti-Islamic politician Geert
Wilders, a newspaper said on Friday.
Wilders' Freedom Party scored the biggest gains
in June 9 polls and is currently negotiating to form a new minority government
with the Liberals and Christian Democrats. Polls show Wilders would win a new
election if one were called now.
Wilders demanded to know why he had learnt
about the threat from the newspaper and not from Dutch authorities who are
guarding him after a film and remarks he made angered Muslims around the world.
De Telegraaf, the Netherlands'
largest newspaper, led its front page on Friday with a story on the speech by Feiz Muhammad.
The Sydney-born Muhammad has gained notoriety
for, among other things, calling on young children to be radicalized and
blaming rape victims for their own attacks.
The paper posted an English-language audio clip
in which he refers to Wilders as "this Satan, this devil, this politician
in Holland" and explains that anyone who talks about Islam like Wilders
does should be executed by beheading.
De Telegraaf did not
say when the speech was given but said it and the Dutch secret service both had
copies.
According to his website, Muhammad is based in
Malaysia.
Wilders told Reuters it was "really
terrible news" and that he was taking it seriously.
"I will ask for clarification from the
Dutch minister of interior/justice why the secret service and anti-terrorism
unit NCTb have not informed me before and what the
consequences will be for me," he said in an email.
A spokesman for the Dutch secret service
referred inquiries on the threat to the NCTb. A
spokeswoman for the NCTb was not available to
comment.
Wilders is currently on trial in the
Netherlands for inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims.
The Freedom Party leader made a film in 2008
which accused the Koran of inciting violence and mixed images of terrorist
attacks with quotations from the Islamic holy book.
Wilders was also charged because of outspoken
remarks in the media, such as an opinion piece in a Dutch daily in which he
compared Islam to fascism and the Koran to Adolf Hitler's book "Mein Kampf."
Of late he has been in the news for plans to
speak out against a planned mosque in New York City on September 11, the ninth
anniversary of the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
But his views have also made him extremely
popular with a segment of the country uneasy about the Netherlands' commitment
to multiculturalism.
Australian PM raps Muslim cleric over sex
rights sermon
January 22, 2009
SYDNEY (AFP) — A Muslim cleric who reportedly
said men have a right to force their wives to have sex and to hit them if they
are disobedient has been condemned by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
"Under no circumstances is sexual violence
permissible or acceptable in Australia," Rudd said after a newspaper
reported cleric Samir Abu Hamza's comments in a sermon posted on the Internet.
"I would call upon this Islamic cleric to
publicly apologise and repudiate his remarks."
The cleric said in his sermon, entitled
"The keys to a successful marriage," that it was a man's right to
demand sex from his wife whenever he felt like it, the Daily Telegraph
reported.
"If the husband was to ask her for a
sexual relationship and she is preparing the bread on the stove, she must leave
it and come and respond to her husband, she must respond," Hamza was
quoted as saying.
He reportedly scorned Australian laws which
make it an offence for a man to force his wife to have sex, saying:
"Amazing, how can a person rape his wife?"
Hamza also said Islamic law allowed men to hit
their wives as a last resort but they should not bruise them or make them
bleed, the paper reported.
Rudd said Australians would not accept any
forms of violence against women, adding: "Nor are they acceptable in my
view to mainstream Muslim teachings."
The Daily Telegraph said Hamza stood by his
sermon, which was delivered in 2003 and posted on the Internet late last year.
However, Hamza said his remarks had been taken
out of context, Islamic Council of Victoria state president Ramzi Elsayed told the national AAP news agency.
Islam did not condone violence against women or
making a wife have sex with her husband against her will, Elsayed
said.
At Hamza's Islamic Information and Service
Network of Australasia in Melbourne a staff member said the cleric was on
holiday for the next "couple of weeks".
A leading Islamic cleric, Sheikh Taj Aldin al-Hilali, was replaced as
Mufti of Australia in 2007 after creating a storm of protest when he described
scantily-dressed women as "uncovered meat" inviting rape.
Local Muslim
clerics accused
Barney Zwartz
Fairfax Digital
November 21, 2008
Muslim religious leaders in Victoria are
condoning rape within marriage, domestic violence, polygamy, welfare fraud and
exploitation of women, according to an explosive report on the training of
imams.
- Rape and violence condoned within marriage:
report
- Study says Islamic law applied to benefit men
- Mufti of Australia denies claims
Women seeking divorces have also been told by
imams that they must leave "with only the clothes on their back" and
not seek support or a share of property because they can get welfare payments.
And the report says some imams knowingly
perform polygamous marriages, also knowing that the second wife, a de facto
under Australian law, can claim Centrelink payments.
The report is based on a study commissioned and
funded by the former Howard government and conducted by the Islamic Women's Welfare Council of
Victoria.
It was presented yesterday at a National Centre for Excellence in
Islamic Studies conference at Melbourne University.
It is the result of extensive community
consultation, interviews with police, lawyers, court workers and academics, and
meetings with and questions to the Victorian Board of Imams.
The board's role is to provide an Islamic view
and religious guidance to the community and represent it to the media. The
report claims that the 24-man board ignored or did not directly answer many of
the questions.
It says women, community and legal workers and
police involved in the consultation were particularly concerned about domestic
violence, and suggested that imams aimed to preserve the family at the cost of
women.
When cases came to court they were often
dropped after family and community elders pressured women to withdraw charges.
The report says some women who were legally
separated but not religiously divorced had their husbands enter their houses,
demand sexual intercourse and take it by force.
"Workers who have assisted women in this
situation said that the advice women received from the imams was that it was
"halal" — permitted — because there was a valid "nikah" —
marriage," it says.
The report also cites sexual assault
allegations connected with under-age marriages.
It says polygamy is steadily increasing and
gaining acceptance among Melbourne Muslims, and Shepparton
police report many "de facto" relationships that are really
polygamous marriages.
"Community workers who have provided
support to women whose husbands took another wife religiously said that women
blame the availability of Centrelink benefits … since one or the other wife
will be claiming it, relieving the husband of the responsibility of supporting
two families," the report says.
Community members quoted in the report believe
that imams' narrow religious training in an increasingly complex world, lack of
life experience, poor English and lack of understanding of Australia create
problems for the community. For example, ill-informed comment by imams drew a
wedge between the mainstream and Muslim communities.
The report suggests the Muslim community
believes many imams are ill-equipped for the role, which involves much higher
expectations in Australia than in predominantly Muslim countries, including marriage
counselling, pastoral and spiritual care, marriages and divorces.
"They come from their own little village
and culture and say this is what Islam is," one woman is quoted saying.
"They come from a village where there is no running water and electricity,
and they bring their dark ideas into this country."
The secretary of the Board of Imams, Sheikh Fehmi Naji El-Imam, said he could
not understand how the council could write such a report and denied the
complaints "absolutely".
"They must have heard stories here and
there and are writing about them as though they are fact," he said.
Sheikh Fehmi, who is
also Mufti of Australia, said no authorised imam
would conduct a polygamous marriage, and it was absolutely wrong that women's
rights were ignored in marriage or divorce, or that imams ignored domestic
violence.
"I haven't heard of any case where the
board disregarded a woman or did not try to help her," he said.
Islamic women's council chairwoman Tasneem
Chopra said: "We are hoping we can negotiate with the appropriate
authorities a better outcome for women, whether through law reform or
education.
"This is a crucial, necessary beginning
but it is part of a much larger picture."
Jets didn't topple towers: cleric
Cameron Stewart
12oct05
AUSTRALIA'S most radical Muslim group is promoting the bizarre conspiracy
theory that planes did not destroy New York's World Trade Centre.
Instead, the prayer group run by controversial Melbourne cleric Sheik Mohammed Omran suggests the Twin Towers were destroyed by controlled
explosions, presumably set off by agents of the US Government.
The radical theory has been given prominence in
a newspaper, Mecca News, edited by Sheik Omran and
published by his group, the Ahlus Sunnah Wal-Jamaah Association. The paper, which claims a readership of
more than 10,000, is distributed around the country.
The story is the second part of a campaign to
persuade local Muslims that the 9/11 attacks in 2001 were part of a US-inspired
conspiracy. The paper last month promoted the theory that a plane did not crash
into the Pentagon in the September 11 attacks and that the story was a major
hoax.
In the October edition of Mecca News, published
this week, the paper does not deny that planes crashed into New York's Twins
Towers, but denies this is what caused them to collapse.
"The problem is that fire has never before
caused steel-frame high-rise buildings to collapse, even when the fire was a
very energetic one," says the paper, which devotes a page to supporting
the conspiracy claims made by a US author, David Ray Griffin.
It asks why a third building, not hit by
planes, collapsed next to the Twin Towers when the building had fires on only
two of its 47 floors. The article suggests all the buildings were brought down
by controlled explosions.
"If explosions had been used to break the
steel columns, these columns would have had telltale signs of the impact of
these explosions," the newspaper says.
"Virtually all of the steel was quickly
removed from the scene, before any forensic examination could be carried out,
then sold to scrap dealers and exported to other countries.
"Generally, removing any evidence from the
scene of a crime is a federal offence, but in this case the FBI allowed this
removal to go ahead."
The article does not explain who might have set
off such controlled explosions or why. However, Mecca News has previously
implied that the 9/11 attacks were a massive US-inspired conspiracy, so the
paper effectively invites readers to conclude that US authorities, not Islamic
terrorists, were to blame.
The paper has defiantly pledged to continue its
9/11 conspiracy series next month, despite an angry response to the provocative
campaign from moderate Muslims and non-Muslims.
The newspaper last month credited its
editor-in-chief, Sheik Omran, with "breaking the
ice" by raising questions in Australia about who was responsible for the
9/11 attacks.
The public campaign on the 9/11 conspiracies
comes despite calls from John Howard and moderate Muslim officials for Islamic
leaders to avoid inflammatory comments on terrorism.
The paper's campaign has sparked a mixed
response from readers. "I implore you to keep up this line of questioning
- you're the only ones with an ounce of sense," one reader writes to the
editor.
But another writes: "I find your comments
about 9/11 repulsive and ignorant to our way of life ... You, sir, should be
deported to Afghanistan or some sandy desert."
A call to hate and to prayer
The Australian
Support for holy war is being urged by Muslim
preachers spreading their message in Australia, reports Richard Kerbaj, who visited mosques and heard voices shrieking with
angst and passion
04nov05
A VOICE explodes through the speakers at Lakemba's nondescript Haldon Street
prayer hall in Sydney's southwest during a Friday qutbah
(sermon). About 400 men - Saudis, Indonesians, Somalis and Lebanese among them
- are huddled shoulder to shoulder, seated or kneeling on the floor of the
hall, above a gym. A few stare blankly ahead, others
have their eyes shut and faces cupped with their palms, almost in a
trance-like, meditative state.
It's October 21, the middle of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, and Sheik Abdul
Salam Mohammed Zoud, who has been living in Australia
since the mid-1990s, stands on a platform at the front of the room reading his
sermon in Arabic.
"Ramadan is not a month for
indolence," he screams through a lapel microphone, drawing on Koranic
parables about the importance of annihilating al-adou
(the enemy) and stressing the Koranic obligation of jihad (spiritual struggle
or holy war) during the month of fasting. His voice can be heard clearly in the
car park outside.
"Ramadan is a month for jihad upon oneself
and jihad upon the enemy," he says, a time when followers must become more
disciplined in adhering to the message of the Koran, and more willing and
prepared to topple the enemy of Islam: the West.
Listeners nod approvingly as Zoud praises mujaheddin - guerilla warriors engaged in holy
war - who are waging bloody battles against Western troops across the world,
and implores Allah to grant them victory in their fight against the enemies of
Islam.
"Allah yinsur
el-mujaheddin fe-Iraq (God grant victory to the
mujaheddin in Iraq)," he screams, his voice crackling as he defies his own
vocal range. He then repeats the message three times, each time screaming it
louder and with more intensely.
Twice at the end of the 35-minute oration in
front of the men, who are mostly in their 30s and 40s, the sheik exclaims in a
voice filled with angst and passion, blame and hate: "Inshallah (God
willing) dark days will descend upon America soon."
Two Fridays earlier, at a prayer centre at Michael Street in Brunswick, Melbourne's Muslim
heartland, the man regarded as Australia's most radical imam, Sheik Mohammed Omran, stands before his mixed band of followers.
Earlier, the men had left their shoes in the
corridor and walked into the room. On entering the mussalah,
they're greeted by whoever they make eye contact with.
"Assalam alaikum" (peace be with you) is acknowledged by the
person being greeted with "Wa-alaikum assalam" (peace be with you too). An A4-sized piece of
paper on the wall reminds attendees to switch off their mobile phones.
Some kneel and pray, others grab a copy of the
Koran off the bookshelf at the back of the room, and read it quietly.
Off-duty taxi drivers, suited businessmen on
their lunch breaks and youngsters wearing baseball caps and tracksuits sit
among the traditionally clad listeners wearing dishdashas (gowns) and sporting
beards. Several Western converts, with fair hair and blue eyes stare at Omran, listening intently. While the 150 or so men watch
the sheik, who stands on an elevated podium, hands gripping a railing,
delivering a qutbah, women sit in a room adjacent, listening
through a speaker.
In the week following the second Bali attacks, Omran's Friday sermon, conducted in Arabic and English,
talks about the fear Westerners have of Ramadan, as history has shown an
increase in militant insurgencies and attacks across the world during that
month. "The West know the meaning of Ramadan more than we do it
seems," says the imam, who migrated from Jordan in the 1980s. "They
fear the worst: unity. So what are we doing to unite
and defeat evil?"
He says Islamic unity and victory in the face
of the West cannot be "stopped by George Bush or Tony Blair or John
Howard".
"If you don't unite, your faces will be
smeared in dirt," he adds.
Both Zoud's and Omran's prayer groups teach Wahhabism, a fundamentalist
branch of Islam founded in Saudi Arabia in the 1700s that inspired the former
Taliban regime in Afghanistan and is preached by the world's most notorious
terrorist: Osama bin Laden, leader of al-Qa'ida.
Yet the voices of such home-based extremists by
no means define the majority of Islamic messages being preached by Muslim
clerics across the country.
Sheik Fehmi Naji al-Imam, one of Australia's most prominent Muslim
leaders and the head of the Preston Mosque, Victoria's largest mosque in
Melbourne's inner-north, isn't discussing politics during a Friday sermon last
month. Instead, he is leading a group of more than 50 men through an Arabic
prayer from the Koran. On completion, he sits at the front of the room and
faces his followers.
A junior cleric then sits beside Naji al-Imam and discusses the importance of praying to God
and of not feeling a sense of helplessness or hopelessness should one suspect
their personal prayer is not being answered.
The cleric says people are often disappointed
when their prayers for more financial wealth don't come to fruition.
"You might pray for thousands of dollars
and feel like your prayers aren't being answered," he says in Arabic.
"But what you've got to remember is he might have saved you from a car
accident and [thus] saved you $10,000."
Zoud has formerly been
accused of having links to terror suspects and recruiting for jihad. And
although he has denied such accusations, he cannot deny the fact his prayer centre, located in Sydney's Muslim heartland, has attracted
terror suspects, including Frenchman Willie Brigitte, arrested and deported to
Paris in 2003 for allegedly plotting a bomb attack on Sydney's naval base; and
former Qantas baggage handler Bilal Khazal, who is
facing terrorism-related charges in Australia.
Friday sermons at the Haldon Street and Michael
Street prayer centres are predominantly geared
towards political issues affecting Muslims across the world. The US and
President George W. Bush figure prominently in Zoud's
and Omran's sermons.
"Last night, President Bush said that the
so-called fanatic Muslims would like to build an empire reaching from Indonesia
to Spain," Omran said during his October 7
sermon. "And he has not said anything as truer or more accurate. What is
wrong with doing that? ... What are we doing to achieve that objective?"
Omran's call to action goes
even further during a Friday sermon at Michael Street conducted the following week
by Harun Abu Talha, news editor of Mecca News, published by the Ahlus Sunnah Wal-Jamaah organisation led by Omran.
During the predominantly English qutbah, the cleric says: "We should not compromise our
deen [religion] for the sake of peace." It is a
message greeted by collective nods from a group of more than 100 men, many of
whom were present at Omran's sermon the previous
Friday.
Abu Talha discusses the injustices and human
rights violations taking place at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp where "so-called
terrorists" are detained.
"They lock up these so-called [Muslim]
terrorists in subhuman conditions," he says. "You wouldn't even keep
an animal like that." He urges listeners to "raise your voices"
against those who "criticise your deen [religion]".
"They criticise
and ridicule our religion and have been doing so for a very long time."
While Naji al-Imam's
service is purely religious, Abu Talha, who is believed to be Bosnian,
discusses "our brothers and sisters" who are dying at the hands of Western
troops in Afghanistan and begins to discuss the importance of jihad before
quipping: "We cannot say too much about mujaheddin in this country."
The joke elicits sniggers and laughter from the group.
Outside Sydney's largest mosque, the Lakemba
Mosque in Wangee Road, which is known for its
moderate preachings, a man in his late 20s is walking
to his car following the Friday prayer. He opens his car boot and grabs a
handful of promotional leaflets about Ramadan. Asked about his thoughts on
extremist Muslims ruining the image of Islam, he says: "You got all kinds
of Muslim here [in Sydney]. But it's always the few extreme ones who ruin it
for the majority, brother."
Australia police say Muslim cleric led attack
plot
08 Nov 2005
CANBERRA, Nov 8 (Reuters) - An Australian
Muslim cleric who said Osama bin Laden was a "great man" has been
named by police as the spiritual leader of a group of 16 men charged on Tuesday
with planning a terrorist attack in Australia.
Abdul Nacer Benbrika, also known as Abu Bakr, has long been monitored
by Australian authorities and grabbed headlines in August after he praised bin
Laden, blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
He is a self-styled leader of a fundamentalist
Islamic group of young followers in the suburbs of Australia's second-biggest
city, Melbourne. Some of these followers, local radio reported, attended
militant training camps in Asia.
"Osama Bin Laden, he is a great man,"
Benbrika, 45, told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
(ABC) radio in August.
Following police raids in Sydney and Melbourne
on Tuesday, Benbrika was charged with directing the
activities of a terrorist organisation and remanded
in custody until January.
Benbrika's passport was
confiscated in March on advice from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, which then raided his Melbourne home in June,
ABC radio has reported.
But Benbrika, a dual
Australian/Algerian citizen who has at least six children and has lived in
Melbourne since 1989, denied he was a security threat.
"I am not involved in anything here. I am
teaching my brothers here the Koran and the Sunna, and I am trying my best to
keep myself, my family, my kids and the Muslims close to this religion,"
he told the ABC, referring to the holy book and the code of conduct for
Muslims.
Benbrika said he opposed anyone
trying to harm his religion. He also said it was a "big problem" for
Muslims reconciling their religion with life in Australia.
"There are two laws. There is Australian
law. There is Islamic law," he said, adding the only law that needed to be
spread was Islam.
"Jihad is part of my religion, and what
you have to understand that anyone who fights for the sake of Allah ... (with)
the first drop of blood that comes from him out, all his sin will be forgiven,"
he said.
Other Australian Muslim leaders have said Benbrika represented a minority view, and Prime Minister
John Howard did not invite Benbrika to a summit of
key Muslim leaders in August.
Cleric has been closely watched
(CNN) -- One of the people arrested in
anti-terrorism raids Tuesday in Australia is outspoken Muslim cleric Abu Bakr,
also known as Abdul Nacer Benbrika.
Bakr has been the subject of intense scrutiny
by Australian security and intelligence services for some time, most recently following
public comments made in August in support of Al Qaeda mastermind Osama Bin
Laden.
"Osama bin Laden, he is a great man,"
Bakr said then during an interview on Australian Broadcasting Corporation
radio.
Australian media also have reported that some of
the followers of Bakr's Melbourne-based fundamentalist Islamic group have
attended terror training camps in Afghanistan.
According to media reports, Bakr had his passport
removed in March by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO)
because "he was likely to prejudice the security of Australia or a foreign
country" if he traveled overseas.
He also was the subject of two ASIO raids in
June, ABC radio reported.
Bakr, 45, is a dual Algerian and Australian
citizen who has lived in Melbourne's northern suburbs since 1989.
Melbourne is Australia's second-largest city
and is the capital of the southern state of Victoria.
Among the ASIO concerns over Bakr's beliefs are
his alleged support for the right of Australians to engage in militant jihad
overseas and his adherence to Islamic law over Australian law.
In his ABC radio interview Bakr denied he was a
threat, saying he was being targeted because of his strong Islamic views.
"I am not involved in anything here. I am
teaching my brothers here the Koran and the Sunna, and I am trying my best to
keep myself, my family, my kids and the Muslims close to this religion,"
he said.
But he also said he could not discourage those
who wished to fight overseas "because Jihad is part of my religion,"
and to do so would betray those beliefs.
"I am telling you that my religion doesn't
tolerate other religion. It doesn't tolerate. The only one law which needs to
spread, it can be here or anywhere else, has to be Islam," he said.
By Miranda Devine
November 13, 2005
In the wake of last week's
counter-terrorism raids, Treasurer Peter Costello declared: "We will never
be an Islamic state. We will never observe sharia law . . . We will always be a
democracy."
Islamic extremists should
leave Australia if they oppose a "secular state with a democratic system
and independent courts - and equality for women".
It seemed a reasonable,
refreshingly unambiguous statement, echoing the sentiments of most Australians,
Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Yet it was condemned as "unjustified,
unacceptable and hatred-instigating" by the Lebanese Muslim Association.
How so? It should not
instigate hatred to assert that the Australian democratic way of life is
preferable to Australians than some form of rule alien to our culture and
values.
But the reaction of the
Lebanese Muslim Association reflects a worrying mindset, a sense of grievance
and entitlement influenced by a hard-core generation of fundamentalist Muslim
preachers, some of whom are associated with a number of the 18 men arrested
last week.
Their aim is to enforce a
fundamentalist line incompatible with Australian life. Some, like Sheik Faiz Mohamad of the Global Islamic Youth Centre in
Liverpool, have preached that women who are raped are at fault if they dress
immodestly. "A victim of rape every minute somewhere in the world. Why? No
one to blame but herself," he told more than 1000 people at the Bankstown
Town Hall in April.
Others, like the firebrand
American preacher Khalid Yasin, who visits Australia regularly, warn about
associating with non-Muslims - "there's no such thing as a Muslim having a
non-Muslim friend". Yasin has declared homosexuality punishable by death
and described suicide bombing as understandable "in the context of
perpetuated protracted oppression" of Muslims.
The fundamentalists are marginalised by established Muslim leaders but appear to
have a following among young radicalised
Australian-born Muslims.
One western-Sydney group, Hizb ut-Tahrir (party of
liberation), which has been described as a "conveyor belt for
terrorists" and is banned in some countries, preaches a vision of a
pan-Islamic state under sharia law.
The group has twice been
invited to speak at Sydney Boys High in the past three years, according to ABC
TV's 7.30 Report.
In August, Hizb ut-Tahrir organiser Soadad Doureihi gave a lecture at Sydney University during Islamic
Awareness Week.
It was entitled
"Combating Terror" but the "terror" was not of the al-Qaeda
variety; it was the state-sponsored "terrorism" of Western
colonialists through the ages.
I have heard a tape of the
lecture in which Doureihi claims Australian Muslims
are being forced to assimilate, as part of the "war against Islam".
"We do not have to
adopt beliefs, ideals and sentiments of a society. We are not and cannot be
forced to adopt a different belief or value system . . . It is the battle of
ideas, the battle of hearts and minds of the people: this is what this war is
all about."
He described Australia as
a racist society whose people, "expect not to pay a price for what they
do".
He cheered the
"Islamic revival you see among the youth . . . They are educated [and]
hold our Islam identity very dear.
Yet we want to propagate
it to other people, other cultures [and] we are refused or denied . . . through
an opponent who doesn't want to engage in discussion [but uses] the bully
tactic of 'shut up, I'll put you in jail, I'll raid your house, I'll intimidate
you even further'."
He spoke of ancient grievances, of Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Bosnia.
Western nations "light a fire in Muslim lands and stand back and hope no
spark lands on their shores . . . Millions of people have been slaughtered at
the hands of Britain, Europe, America, yet 56 or 57, 58 people in London saw
what this meant. [Then] we saw the world stand up and say this is an attack on
Western values but the reality is . . . there is an injustice. You cannot hope
to create so much chaos and anarchy in lands [and think] no price will ever
have to be paid by society."
Noam Chomsky couldn't have
put it better. This poisoning of young minds, the sense of historic victimhood
and alienation, is daily fueled by the self-loathing cultural relativists of
the Western intellectual establishment. The only obvious antidote is to embrace
the vast bulk of moderate Muslims, and to speak plainly to the rest, as
Costello has.
Australia To
Track Muslim Clerics
SYDNEY, Australia, Dec. 27, 2005
(AP) Islamic clerics in Australia
will be required to register and adhere to a code of conduct, a council of
moderate Muslims announced Tuesday, amid efforts to rein in radical preachers
following the London bombings.
The Muslim Advisory Council, which comprises 14 Islamic community leaders
hand-picked by Prime Minister John Howard to help authorities counter the rise
of Islamic extremism, will meet next month to discuss drafting the imams' code,
council member Yasser Soliman said.
"We're trying to put together some sort of guidelines about who can become
a cleric," Soliman told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. "The
guidelines are in response to suggestions by the community and clerics ...
there are people who are appointing themselves as clerics when they're really
just backyard clerics and unqualified."
Radical Muslim cleric Sheik Mohammed Omran who has
preached that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is a great man who played no part
in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States reacted angrily to the
council's move.
"They don't have authority; they don't have the power; they don't have any
license to talk about that (registering clerics)," Omran
told The Australian newspaper in an interview published Tuesday.
Soliman agreed the council had no power to enforce the code of conduct or force
clerics to register, but he predicted that only five or six clerics would
refuse to register.
"They'll be identified as not plugging into the mainstream and not
representing the community," Soliman said. "At this stage, there's a
big fog about where they fit in."
Soliman said the guidelines will be helpful for clerics from overseas.
"Clerics coming from overseas especially would benefit from understanding
the politics of the country, the political system, the language if they're not
very fluent in English," Soliman said. "It's important that any gaps
be identified. It's not something that should come across as being an
insult."
Howard established the Muslim Advisory Council after the July 7 London bombings
killed 52 people, highlighting the risk of homegrown terrorists in Britain.
The prime minister has criticized Australia's Islamic leaders for failing to
speak out against radical preachers.
But Howard in turn has come under criticism for excluding radical Muslims from
his council and for failing to acknowledge the role that Australia's
involvement in the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq has in radicalizing
young Muslims.
Australian authorities launched their largest ever counterterrorism crackdown
on Nov. 8, arresting 18 Muslims in coordinated pre-dawn raids in Melbourne and
Sydney in an operation police said headed off a catastrophic terror attack,
possibly targeting a nuclear reactor in southern Sydney.
Imams 'condone domestic violence'
January 30, 2006
THE nation's most senior Islamic woman has attacked Muslim
religious leaders who condone "wife-beating" and other forms of
domestic violence.
Aziza
Abdel-Halim, the only female member of the Prime Minister's Muslim Advisory Council,
has warned that Islamic women are being "put down" by imams in
hardline and moderate circles and their rights ignored.
"Women have suffered from sometimes ill-informed imams ... who have tried
to put down women and negate some of their rights or activities," she said
yesterday.
"And some of them (imams) have condoned men beating women, which is
un-Islamic."
The comments, unusually outspoken for a female Muslim leader, have surfaced
amid concerns that no female community representatives had been invited to the
coming national imams conference in Sydney.
The conference is likely to see moderate spiritual leaders attempt to crack
down on radical clerics and their extremist views and to develop a national
board of imams. It is also likely to consider a code of behaviour
for the country's imams.
The meeting will be attended by 10 community representatives and 62 imams,
including firebrand cleric Mohammed Omran, who has
come under fire from the federal Government and moderate Muslim leaders for espousing
radical views, including that al-Qa'ida leader Osama
bin Laden is not a terrorist but a "good man".
Fellow radical spiritual leaders Abdul Salam Mohammad Zoud
and Faiz Mohamad have also been invited.
Sister Abdel-Halim, who is president of the Muslim Women's National Network
Australia, said the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, the conference
host, was being "unjust" by not inviting female community
representatives to attend.
"Women are half of the community and they bring up the other half, so you
shouldn't really exclude them from anything," she said. "There should
be some women observers who have a background in ... Islamic studies, and these
women will represent the women within the community and should have an input."
She said the women may "raise a few points of concern that the imams may
not be aware of or may be aware of and may be reluctant to address".
Sister Abdel-Halim's comments about cruelty towards Muslim women were backed by
Jamila Hussain, a lecturer in Islamic law at the University of Technology
Sydney, who said many imams were out of touch with the issues concerning Muslim
women.
She worried that some spiritual leaders were indifferent to the cruelty being
experienced by some women at the hands of aggressive partners.
"We don't know what imams are telling the men," Ms
Hussain said. "Are they taking a stand, for example, against domestic
violence? They should be, but we don't know whether they are or not. We suspect
some are but probably the majority are not."
Sister Abdel-Halim told The Australian that "imams wield a great deal of
power over the community".
"When people go to congregation, the imam for them is the source of
religious knowledge and what he says to a lot of them is indisputable,"
she said.
She said that along with the imams who would be present at the conference, both
male and female academics and youth leaders should also be invited to share
their views.
She said she thought the AFIC board of executives "find educated women
very threatening because women are ... very good community organisers
and high achievers when it comes to (setting up initiatives)".
The federation has recently come under attack from community youth
representatives and other Muslim leaders for not being representative of the
Islamic community in Australia.
The Australian's phone calls to the
federation yesterday were not returned.
Natalie O'Brien and
Tracy Ong
September 18, 2006
Singapore-based
terrorism analyst Rohan Gunaratna told The Australian that despite their
denials and stronger terror laws, religious leaders in the two cities continued
to preach violence to impressionable followers, though they now did it away
from their mainstream teachings. He said the clerics' influence on young
believers increased the risk of a terrorist attack in Australia. "We have
seen a number of Australian clerics preaching jihad and martyrdom," Dr
Gunaratna said.
"The most likely form of attack in
Australia is a suicide attack for jihad. You will need to make arrests in
time."
Clive Williams, who runs a terrorism and
counter-terrorism program at the Australian Defence
Force Academy, said young Muslims were being recruited for jihad through
"Koran classes". "They are doing it differently now," he
said.
Sheik Omran said
terrorism experts made their living from the counter-terrorism industry and it
was in their interests to keep the threat going.
Muslim Community Service of Western Australia
chairman Sheik Mahmoud Omran said if anybody had
evidence they should put up or shut up.
The claims came as the inaugural Conference of
Australian Imams wound up in Sydney yesterday. About 100 Muslim leaders
attended the two-day conference, which was hosted by the federal Government's
Muslim Reference Group.
Parliamentary Secretary on Immigration and
Multicultural Affairs Andrew Robb told the conference that imams could play a
significant role in minimising the opportunities for
extremists to influence vulnerable youth, by speaking English.
"It seems to me that they must be
preaching in English if the young people in their communities can understand
Islam in an Australian context," he said.
A communique issued at the end of the
conference said the imams condemned all forms of terrorism, hatred and
extremism in the past and would continue to do so.
It was also agreed that religious leaders
should have effective communication skills, including tuition in English with
the aim of having sermons delivered entirely in English.
They called for religious leaders to get a
broader knowledge of Australian society, culture, the legal system and politics
and for the training of a new generation of Australian-born imams.
The group also revealed plans to establish a
national centre for excellence in Islamic studies
that would be open both to Muslim and non-Muslim students, and a national board
of the Islamic religion and community to deal with religious issues that could
represent the communities at a national level.
October
29, 2006
Sunday
Telegraph
ASIO warned authorities 20 years ago that Sheik Taj al-Din
Al-hilaly could inflame communal violence in
Australia.
Court judgments
show ASIO initially believed the controversial mufti posed a risk to the
community because of his alleged propensity to cause or promote violence.
Shortly after his arrival
in Australia as the new imam of Lakemba Mosque in 1982, Sheik Hilaly was also linked with a shadowy terrorist group,
Soldiers of God, which is thought to have been involved in the assassination of
Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981.
A group of the same name,
also known as Ansar al Islam, is among those listed by the Federal Government
as a banned terrorist organisation.
Western governments
believe Ansar al Islam has close ideological and operational links with
al-Qaeda.
Sheik Hilaly
was also alleged to have endorsed suicide bombing, verbally attacked women and
preached a highly political message of extremism.
The Sunday
Telegraph columnist Piers Akerman writes today that a former
intelligence officer said Sheik Hilaly's name first
surfaced in a report by one of Australia's most senior intelligence assets in
Cairo. The claimed the sheik spent a number of years training in Libya and was
sent to Australia to train extremists.
Akerman writes the report
was shelved and the agent who sent it believes that a campaign was waged
against its contents.
The pressure on Sheik Hilaly grew yesterday, with Parliamentary Secretary for
Multicultural Affairs Andrew Robb saying it was time for him to heed the wishes
of moderate Muslims and resign.
He also questioned the
sincerity of his apology for comments comparing women to uncovered meat and
blaming them for rape.
"The body language of
the apology was totally unconvincing," Mr Robb
said.
"He's condoned
violence against women and snubbed his nose at ... every section of the
community."
Muslim cleric urges children to be martyrs
Australian calls Jews pigs, sparks controversy
with his 'Death Series' DVDs
Reuters
Jan 19, 2007
SYDNEY, Australia - An Australian Muslim cleric
has urged children to be martyrs for Islam and referred to Jews as pigs in a
series of DVDs, sparking condemnation by the government and further straining
tensions with the nation’s Muslims.
Sheik Feiz Mohammed,
head of the Global Islamic Youth Center in Sydney’s western suburbs, is the
second cleric to inflame anti-Muslim sentiment in Australia with controversial
comments.
Sheikh Taj El-Din Hilaly,
the imam of Australia’s biggest mosque, was accused of justifying rape in
November after a Ramadan sermon in which he said unveiled women were like
uncovered meat.
Australian media said Feiz
has lived in Lebanon for the past year and that his “Death Series” DVDs were
made public by a British documentary this week called “Undercover Mosque”.
“We want to have children and offer them as
soldiers defending Islam,” said Feiz in the video,
reported Sydney’s Daily Telegraph newspaper.
“Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved
to me than wanting to die as a mujahid. Put in their soft, tender hearts the
zeal of jihad and a love of martyrdom,” he said.
The paper also said Feiz
had insulted Jews, referring to them as pigs.
Feiz has a series of video
clips on www.youtube.com in which he also calls for jihad and praises
martyrdom.
The Australian government and ethnic leaders,
including Muslims, condemned Feiz’s comments on
Thursday.
“The importation of hatred into Australia is
totally unacceptable,” acting Attorney-General Kevin Andrews told reporters.
“These remarks and the others before them are condemned by the government.”
'Hate speech' condemned
Australia’s ethnic leaders called for Feiz to face possible racial hatred charged for his
speeches, which were published in part by Australian newspapers on Thursday.
“Hate speech such as these remarks by Sheik
Mohammed has no place in Australian society and must be vigorously condemned by
all,” said Vic Alhadeff, chief executive of Jewish
Board of Deputies in the state of New South Wales.
Community Relations Commission chairman Stepan Kerkyasharian called for the sheik to face possible race
hate charges.
“The federal prosecutor should really have a
close look at what is being conveyed by this guy and whether it is in breach of
any laws and he should be charged,” Kerkyasharian
told radio.
Islamic Friendship Association spokesman Kaysar Trad said the comments did not reflect the
sentiments of Australian Muslims.
“As a community, it is quite disconcerting for
us that these comments are found from time to time and they’re broadcast all
over the news,” said Trad. “They certainly give the public an erroneous
impression about Islam and Muslims.”
Last week Hilaly, who
left Australia for the Middle East after his controversial remarks, told
Egyptian television that white Australians were liars and that Muslims were
more entitled to be in Australia than those with a convict heritage.
Muslims have been in Australia for more than
200 years, initially arriving as camel drivers to help open up the vast
outback. Today there are about 280,000 Muslims in the 20 million population,
living predominately in Sydney and Melbourne.
“We have had repeated remarks made by the most senior Islamic cleric in Australia.
We have these latest remarks. There is this pattern of behavior which is very
concerning to the government,” said Andrews.
Cleric probed over tax avoidance
March 19, 2007
Fairfax Digital
A senior Muslim cleric who works for the tax
office in Canberra is under investigation over allegations of tax avoidance.
Palestinian-born imam Mohammad Swaiti has been accused by senior Muslim leaders of failing
to pay income tax on thousands of dollars he allegedly received from the Saudi
government, The Australian reported.
Documents obtained by the newspaper show the
Australian Tax Office (ATO) is investigating allegations that Sheik Swaiti failed to declare his clerical allowance of up to
$37,700 a year, paid to him by the Saudi government.
An ACT Islamic association has also accused the
sheik of holding radical views, the paper said.
The claims follow in the wake of a report last
week which revealed hardline clerics were encouraging Muslims not to pay tax
because it was contrary to sharia law, the paper said.
Sheik Swaiti refused
to comment on the investigation or the accusations.
"God is watching but let them do what they
want," he told The Australian in Arabic.
"Even if they accuse me of murder, I will
not comment. You should not take any rubbish from anyone."
The ATO would not comment on the investigation.
Tarique on Sun,
2007-03-25
Sydney, March 25 (DPA) A Muslim
cleric who whipped up a storm last year when he told his Sydney flock that
women who don't wear the veil invite rape has been endorsed as the supreme
leader of Australia's 300,000 Muslims.
Clerics from around the country
meeting in Sydney decided Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali,
67, should keep the post of Mufti of Australia that he has held since 1988.
Prime Minister John Howard last
year urged Muslims to dump al- Hilali, as did New
South Wales Premier Morris Iemma.
Earlier this year al-Hilali raised the ire of Australians when he said Muslim
migrants had a greater entitlement to the country than those who arrived at the
time of colonial settlement.
"We came as free people, we
bought our own tickets, we are entitled to Australia more than they are,"
al-Hilali told a television station in his native
Egypt.
Howard called on Muslims to show a
willingness to join the mainstream by ditching their controversial leader.
Al-Hilali,
an Australian citizen, has been censured before for his extremist views and
each time the Muslim community has closed ranks behind him.
He made international headlines
when he told the congregation at Sydney's largest mosque that a woman in
revealing clothes was herself to blame for sexual assault "because if she
hadn't left the meat uncovered the cat wouldn't have snatched it."
After the remarks, 34 Muslim community
organizations signed a petition urging al-Hilali to
defy calls for him to stand down.
Al-Hilali
has denied the Holocaust, defended suicide bombers, described as "God's
work against oppressors" the 2001 terrorist attacks in the US, and blamed
Jews for "all the wars and problems that threaten the peace and stability
of all the world."
Speaking after the cat comments,
Treasurer Peter Costello, deputy leader of the ruling Liberal Party, demanded
that Muslims respond to public outrage and denounce al-Hilali.
"You go right through the
decade, the sheik has been anti-Semitic, he has supported jihadists, he has
made statements that are absolutely offensive to women, such as the 'uncovered
meat' one - it wasn't just that he had a bad day last September," Costello
said.
The show of support for al-Hilali is likely to draw further demands that Australian
Muslims reaffirm their commitment to democracy, freedom of religion and the
rule of law.